6 Spider-Silk Superpowers

For years, scientists have been trying to tap into the power of spider silk, one of nature's most amazing materials, but they've struggled to produce mass quantities. Now, a research team may have invented a way to produce the stuff in large amounts. Here's what they want to do with it.

6 Spider-Silk Superpowers

6 Spider-Silk Superpowers

Stronger than steel and more elastic than a rubber band, spider silk has dozens of potential applications in construction, medicine, and the military. In recent years, scientists have suggested using spider silk to construct products as diverse as biodegradable water bottles, flexible bridge suspension cables, and unrippable writing paper.

However, Utah State University spider-silk researcher Randy Lewis says, "virtually nobody has had a sufficient amount of spider-silk material to make a full-scale test of these product ideas." The problem is that spiders tend to be murderous and cannibalistic toward each other—they’re not exactly what you might call farm-friendly animals. That makes spider silk difficult to mass produce, and harvesting it from the wild can take years.

"With our new silkworms, we’re going to be able to change that completely," Lewis says. He’s part of a team that recently used worms to create spider silk. The researchers added genes that code for spider-silk proteins into the silkworms’ DNA, and the transgenic worms spun those spider proteins into their own silk. Although scientists have been harvesting similar proteins from the milk of transgenic goats, it has been difficult to find the right equipment to spin the tiny molecules into thread, he says. This new approach streamlines production, since silkworms do the spinning themselves. The resulting fibers are twice as strong and twice as elastic as normal silkworm silk. And since silkworms are vegetarians, they are highly farmable and have already proven their ability to make silk on an industrial scale.

If the technique is perfected, it could finally enable researchers and inventors to test the craziest possible applications of spider silk, and to bring its unique mechanical properties to the mass market. If it works, you might someday see these six surprising spider-silk products.

Lighter, Stronger Bulletproof Clothing

Lighter, Stronger Bulletproof Clothing

Last August, researchers melded spider silk and human skin into Spiderman-like body armor. To make it, scientists extracted spider-silk proteins from the milk of genetically engineered goats, then wove those proteins into artificial silk fibers. After grafting the silk fibers with human epidermis, the hybrid skin was able to repel a slow-moving bullet fired by a .22-caliber rifle. The material was not bulletproof at normal bullet speeds, but the researchers used only four layers of material; standard bulletproof vests made from Kevlar are made of 33 layers. If scaled up, spider-silk body armor could be three times stronger than Kevlar.